Pain Don't Hurt (20 page)

“I haven't seen you for so long, Mr. Shark! I am glad to see you. Robbie told me that he was working with you! He said that you were looking good!” Andre's bright eyes were shining; his presence made me feel even more relaxed.

“Yeah! I am so glad I got to train with Rob. Hey, Andre, when am I going to get one of those shirts, man? You know I've been a fan for forever, when do I qualify?”

I was referring to Andre's Mejiro Gym shirt. I was in awe of the old Dutch kickboxing gyms Mejiro, Chakuriki, and Vos. So many titans had come out of those. So many kings. Andre smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “We'll see, Mark, we shall see.”

I sat in the corner with Shelby, who was now playing video games on her phone. She was nervous and trying very hard not to show it. She was distracting herself but fidgeting and clearly emotionally reactive. As we had filed into the room one of the co-promoters of the event had touched her shoulder and said, “It's just really good that he's fighting again, you know?” It seemed like a nice enough thing to say, but with the tone it was said in, it was obvious what was being implied. No one expected me to win, and this person was trying to offer a bright side to Shelby, who they figured would be carrying my broken body back to the hotel later that night. My sweet friend didn't react so kindly to it. Shelby was behind me when it happened, and while they had tried to be quiet, I had heard the whole thing. I also heard when she yanked her arm away and said, “It's also going to be fucking awesome when he wins. PS: pity is so fucking unattractive.”

A TV crew was moving between the rooms doing interviews. The man holding the microphone was Samuel Pagal from Eurosport TV. He was an impeccably dressed French journalist, in braids and custom-fitted leather pants with a bright scarf draped around his neck and a bomber jacket on. He tipped up his sunglasses and approached me.

“Man, and here I thought I was the best-looking guy in the room,” I said, smiling, as I shook his hand.

“Mark it is, yes? So, Mark, we know your nickname is ‘Fightshark,' but why that nickname?”

He held the mic out and I leaned in, the memory of when my nickname was first spoken suddenly so fresh in my mind.

“I was in my early twenties, and after a sparring session where I had been particularly brutal, my trainer told me that I was like a shark in the water when it smells blood. If I know you're hurt, I come after you. I'm the Fightshark.”

Samuel was grinning. “I love it, Mark, I love it.” He asked me a few more questions about my heart and then wished me well, but not before commenting on Shelby's outfit, which she loved.

After a little while, Willie came in, and I sat to have my hands taped. It felt good, calming. I hadn't had tape on in so long, but here it felt familiar. Like putting on an old, comfortable pair of jeans. Willie was serene, even-toned, relaxing as he talked to me, went over the game plan. Once my hands were finished I waited to get my gloves so I could warm up. Shelby turned to me and said, “Let's play the game, Mark.”

We went back and forth quietly. She gave me a strike, and I rattled off the counter, trying to get my mind to disappear into the answers so they came faster than I could even recognize. I was immersing myself in the patterns that come naturally to a fighter. I started thinking in terms of what I wanted to set up, what my strengths were. The gloves were brought in, bright blue ones. Willie started rubbing them and manipulating them to soften them up before he put them on and taped me in. I warmed up on the pads with Willie for a bit before he worked with Mighty Mo. Shelby watched close by, taking quick breaths as she tried to calm her obvious nerves. I was not nervous now. I was so calm, in fact, that I felt like I could take a nap. I had missed this, longed for this. I was excited, but more so, I was happy. The time came; I was up soon, so a few people came to retrieve me and take me to the back of the catwalk.

There was only one catwalk to walk out on. This meant that I would be going down the same walkway as my opponent, either before or after him. Nikolaj stood a few feet from me. His trainer, a massive man with a shaved head, was grabbing ahold of Nikolaj's shoulders and pressing his forehead against Nikolaj's. He was muttering something, something aggressive sounding, in another language, and every so often Nikolaj let out a series of impossibly loud screams. The second time he did it, Shelby, whose nerves were eating her up, turned to him and loudly went, “Are you kidding me?!” Willie and I burst out laughing.

I was to walk first. The announcer shouted my name, and I set foot onto the walkway into a cascade of spotlight. Twenty feet away was the ring. The ring, my home. The place where I had worked through so many personal and emotional battles, the place where I had unshackled so many demons and brought them out to play, hurling them at my willing opponents. The place where everything shrank down to simple, quick decisions, and for minutes the world was so uncomplicated and lovely. The place that had been my church, my sanctuary, my theme park, my playground, my purgatory, and the nest from which my smoldering carcass would hopefully rise again from its ash. This was where we as fighters went to grind out our pain, to survive. To truly be alive. I had only minutes to go. The helicopter that had crashed and taken out so many had spared the ones closest to it, held them safe somehow against its metal bosom as it careened into others and crushed them. My whole life had felt like I was in the helicopter, and I had been inside it. I had come this far. I had rebuilt my little army with better soldiers than I was born into having. I had my three boys, Shelby, her family, Justin, Matty, Mikee, Rakaa, Paul, Cory, Jacob, everyone. They were waiting, they were watching, they had sent their best hopes to follow me and the score I was settling into this ring. My feet were moving as though through water, without my being connected to them, it felt like. I was floating. My heart was thundering like a war drum. I reached the ring and turned to climb inside; I saw Shelby step off the catwalk and Willie go to the corner. From here until the bell, it was now up to me, and me alone.

Guide me now. Be with me.

Nikolaj walked down the catwalk, screaming and snarling. He stepped into the ring and went straight to his corner, his coach firing him up more and more, pulling on his shoulders as Nikolaj stamped and pawed at the ground like an angry ox. I pulled my shoulders back and stretched my jaw. I didn't need manufactured motivation. I had the real thing. That's what everything had been up until now. Encouragement, training. The bell sounded, and the referee immediately called for a pause as a small water bottle somehow rolled into the ring. Our pace was awkwardly halted as they retrieved it, and I glanced up to see Shelby in the crowd. She was leaning against a pillar next to a cluster of VIP tables. Her hands were pressed to her mouth and she was completely frozen. She knew the weight of this fight. She might as well have been tied to me.

The referee waved us on, and we began.

Nikolaj approached me; his cover was good. Having big muscles is a plus because one can hide behind them. I threw an inside low kick at him, and though he checked it, he didn't like it. Then he decided to bully me . . . he started trying to walk me down. I threw my jab. . . . And I saw it. . . .

Nikolaj had walked right into it. As my jab was retracting, the entire world slowed, and I saw it. He was countering with a left hook, leaving the left side of his face completely vulnerable.

Left hook.
Shelby's voice, Buddy's drills . . .

Right hook.

I slipped his left hook, and I threw it. My fist connected, and I knew by the feel, by the sound. Nikolaj crumpled to the floor.

I was almost too shocked to return to my corner, but Willie was screaming at me to come back so the ref could start the count. It wasn't a full knockout, not yet. Nikolaj might still rise to his feet. I went to my corner. The ref counted, and Nikolaj rose on rubbery legs before staggering backward into the ropes. He was muttering to the ref, something I couldn't hear, and suddenly, the ref waved it off.

I had won. By knockout. In nine seconds.

Willie ran to me. He lifted me up, giggling. “
You did it, Mark! You did it!
”

I could not stop shaking. I hadn't shaken before the fight, yet now, I was trembling like a leaf in a storm.

I clasped Nikolaj's glove in mine and he was kind in defeat. Later he asked me how long it had been since my heart surgery. I told him four years. He shook his head and smiled. “You hit very hard,” he said, his face bearing the swelling and bruise from the punch.

As I was stepping out of the ring Shelby came, on tiny quick steps in her heels, and grabbed me in a massive hug. She was crying. “I am so proud of you, so proud.” I had to let go of her hug fast; I didn't want to lose it. Not here.

As I made my way back to the room, I saw Andre, and he walked up to me. “I spoke to Robbie on the phone, he said to give you a big hug and a kiss. I won't kiss you, but here . . .”

Andre pulled the Mejiro shirt off his own back and handed it to me before grabbing me in a massive hug. “You have earned this, Mark. You have earned this.”

The entire night, wealthy Russian businessmen offered to buy me champagne and caviar. I declined politely, but Shelby partook. She fell asleep on the bus on the way back to the hotel, her pillbox hat slightly crooked and her red lipstick smeared. We went up to the hotel room, and she disappeared into the bathroom, reappearing only twenty minutes later in sweats with no makeup on. In minutes, she was asleep on the chaise.

I got in the shower, thinking about everything that had brought me here. My self-doubt, my anger, my inability to climb out of my own self-imposed cage. Then the eventual letting go of every weight I bore that told me what I was supposed to be and the accepting of who I am. My friends, who would not let me drown. My kids. My boys . . .

I came out of the shower and sent Justin a text message. I wouldn't hear back from him until I was back in the States, but I told him I loved him.

Before I climbed into bed, I sat beside Shelby and placed one hand on her shoulder. As she was sleeping, I told her thank you. I told her thank you for everything. She would never know what she did for me. She would never know how close I was to giving up.

And then, in bed, I slept, the deepest sleep I had known in a long, long time.

chapter twenty

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

—
OSCAR WILDE

T
his homecoming was the best I had ever received. Shelby's mother
picked us up from the airport and was wearing the biggest and brightest smile I had ever seen. When we got back to Shelby's house, her brother, Tristan, grinned at me and said, “Told you I should've bet money on that fight, you would have made me a rich man.” Her father had us over to his house a few days later, where he had invited friends and coworkers over to brag about my fight. Matty and I talked a few times, and Mikee called to tell me how proud he was of me. I felt like a fighter again. My kids called and said they missed me, so I took a portion of my win money and booked a flight home. I hadn't seen them in way too long.

Pennsylvania still was full of ghosts, but I felt a little better, a little stronger, about being there. I didn't feel so defeated or lost. I took my children out to meals, bought them some new clothes, and generally did things that I hadn't in past years been as able to do. After a few days I decided I felt strong enough to finally do something I hadn't done yet. I wanted to visit my parents. I was ready.

I sent Shelby a message and asked her to be near her Skype. I wanted to show her something. . . .

I climbed into the car I had rented and rolled down the window. It was starting to rain, and fat droplets flew through the window onto my arm and the side of my face. A spring storm was coming. I was more nervous to do this than I had been for my fight. I hadn't done much to address my feelings about my family since they had died. I had wept torrents in the recent months, but I hadn't really felt that I had said good-bye or found closure. In truth I don't think I had addressed my feelings about my family since before they died. I had been able to mourn in small spurts when something would trigger a memory, but I had not yet found a way to completely release all of that pain I had in me about their being gone and about the way I had grown up. I had lingered in anger for so long, avoiding tapping into any feelings of real sorrow. I was pissed off that my family had died, one after the other, that they had left me to handle all of their business. I was pissed off that I'd never had the life I wanted with them, the childhood I had read about or seen in friends of mine. Fathers who carried their sons on their shoulders like I do with mine now, or mothers who cuddled and kissed their babies. I was pissed that my brother hadn't wanted to live enough to get clean, that he had jumped the emotional ship so early on that I missed out on having someone to talk to when all hell was breaking loose in the house. I was pissed that he had died after I had told him to, as if to spite me, and left me there to miss him and hate myself. I was pissed that he had said the things he had, that there were elements of truth to his final corrosive words, even if they were generated specifically to hurt me. I hadn't been able to visit my parents; he was right about that. Because it was too hard to take. The finality of it all. Once you accept that a person is truly gone, there is nothing left to do but grieve, since the conversation is ended. There is no more to work out, no score left to settle, no more talks. It's just you, left by yourself, with a fucking bag of issues that you've accumulated over the years. Time to sift through the bag. Time to take out the garbage.

I pulled onto the long street that led right up to their burial plots. I lingered in the car for a bit; maybe I was preparing myself. The National's “Fake Empire” blared through the speakers, a song I had played over and over again to punish myself. I think I was saying good-bye to that too, this imprisoning of myself in misery. I wanted to live in the light. I wanted to be happy.

“Let's not try to figure out everything at once, it's hard to keep track of you falling through the sky, we're half awake in our fake empire, we're half awake in our fake empire. . . .”

Deep breaths, deep breaths.

Final good-byes don't always happen at the moment a person leaves you. You'll know when you have said your final good-bye. You'll feel it. It resonates in your body, this hollowness, this echo of “no more.” It's a concept that people can't process with any quickness. We aren't built to deal with it in one fell swoop. Instead it grows like kudzu slowly over you, and before you know it you're suffocating under this thick, heavy mass of undeniable loss that you have to deal with. All the
never again
s swirl through your head like angry hornets. Never again will I . . . eat German chocolate cake with my mom, work on the house with my dad, or play a song for my brother, receive or send a Christmas card, birthday card, hear a voice, laugh at a joke, fight with, laugh with, break bread with, never again will I have a chance to see if it could be better. . . . Never again . . .

I had been holding back all of these feelings, this complex tangle inside, and every time I felt like leaking some of it out, I could feel its vastness following, not allowing for it to be broken apart, and the magnitude of that grief threatened to buckle me. I was never ready to let it through, to just invest in being a man who had buried his family. Even now, when I talk about it, it feels like I am speaking of someone else, still keeping all of that preserved pain at arm's length, maintaining enough distance to not get pummeled by it, to not get swept into that dark and tempestuous sea of loss.

The rain was coming down now. It was comforting, and I felt my hurt was camouflaged by the gray sheets washing over me. Some voice inside said, “Just leave, go back, change your clothes, get an umbrella, come back tomorrow.” I tuned it out. Your mind will always try to convince you to avoid discomfort, to run from pain, and wait for the “opportune time.” The truth is, that time doesn't exist. There will never be perfect conditions to deal with anything that hurts or scares you. It's like a fight in a ring. If you want to find excuses to back out of facing it, you will. There are always a myriad of them lingering around, and it can be harder to dig up the motivation to keep going rather than to give up or hang back. You have to set your jaw and just move forward, no matter what. You have to swing out onto that rope of uncertainty and hope for the best. Walking into the ring was never this hard, but it gave me the strength to know how to just put one foot in front of the other, until I stood facing them. Side by side, Harry and Helen Miller. My parents.

I knelt down and pulled a few weeds that had grown thick surrounding their headstones. There were flowers on my father's grave; I will never know who brought them. I had words trying to fall into order in my throat. When you talk to a person in a coma, you can speak knowing that maybe they will hear you. At this grave site my voice sounded so unconvinced, so strange. I don't know who I was talking to; possibly to myself.

“Hi. I, um. I haven't been here because I was, uh, real fucked up for a while. And, I . . . I didn't know what else I had to say to you guys. You left me with a lot of shit to sift through—could have done better on that, Dad.”

I forced a laugh. My fingers were running through the grass, searching for something to hold on to, wanting something to hold on to me.

“So I guess, I wanted to say that I love you guys. . . . I think I do. And I wanted to say thank you, for, trying. . . . Thank you for trying. I am grateful for my life. . . .”

With that, the dam that had held back years of bitter anger and hurt melted enough to create a crack, and all of those tears I hadn't cried yet came roaring through. Honesty has a way of placing you directly in the middle of whatever emotion you've been protecting yourself from. I buckled in half, my palms resting on those granite stones, air pulling into my lungs almost too slowly for me to breathe. The sobs were violent, and embarrassing, even though no one was around.

This was the first time I had been able to cry in front of my parents since I was a baby, and this time I was crying because I actually missed them.

“I'm so sorry, guys, I'm so sorry. . . .”

I must have said this a million times. I don't know what I was saying it for. Maybe I was sorry that I couldn't have made things better for them or that I couldn't have helped them to be happier. Maybe I was sorry that I had hated them for so long and blamed them for my unhappiness. Maybe I was sorry that they weren't there to see me growing out of the parameters they had set for me and into something bigger, something stronger.

After an hour or two I reached a point of calm, and I called Shelby on Skype. She answered, and I made sure to point the phone away from my face. She had seen me cry more than anyone ever had, but I still wasn't comfortable with it.

“Hey, kid. How are you?” I had the camera pitched slightly over my shoulder. She could see the rain coming down on the hills behind me. I'm sure she could hear the cracks in my voice, but she didn't let on.

“Heya. Where are you, dude? How's the Pit treating you?” I could see her eyes searching around, trying to figure out my surroundings.

“I'm okay, weather sucks. But hey, I want you to meet some people. . . .”

I turned the camera toward my parents' graves.

“Shelby, this is Harry and Helen Miller. Guys, this is Shelby.”

She was quiet for a minute, and then she spoke softly.

“Hi. Nice to meet you. Thank you for making my best friend. . . . I'm proud of you, buddy. Good to see you finally did this.”

She smiled through the camera. I thanked her and got off the phone quickly.

The ride back was quiet. Passing bars I had gotten drunk in and fields I had played in. The schools I had attended, and the small gyms where I had learned the beginnings of my craft. This town had raised me collectively. I had been born to a set of parents, but I had been cared for and nurtured by many. My coaches became my parents. My training partners my brothers and sisters. I had been raised by Steelers, by Pirates, by fighters and athletes. I learned to walk on fields and concrete floors. I took my licks at home, but I learned to give back here.

Justin sent me a message as I drove home:
Did you see your folks?

I responded,
Yes I did. Shelby met them too. I'm sorry you never got to.

Justin, in true Justin fashion, had this to say:
I already met the best part of them. You. Get home safe. And come visit sometime. I think you could actually be in Austin and not totally fuck shit up now. Love you.

I had tracked Maurice down not long before. We were talking again, and I would start training with him once more several months later. My tribe was reconnecting.

As I pulled up to the front of the house where my kids lived, I saw Ronan, one of my twins, burst through the door. Saw his crooked little smile and heard his husky voice bellowing, “
Daddy!
” Ronan's twin, Paddy, followed, a quieter version of him, more reserved. Ben came after. Already tall and quirky, Ben reminded me of me. I had done so much wrong in my life, but somehow I had been gifted with wonderful children, children I couldn't have been more proud of. Children I couldn't say enough good things about. They were perfect in their individuality. They were smarter than me, and they would grow to be bigger and better than I ever was.

What you are born with is just that. Your beginnings, nothing more. You have no choice in that matter. It's how you deal with it that makes you who you are. Everyone has demons; everyone has shit they have to shovel through. You find your ring, you pick your fights, and you work through it. You don't back down from something because it scares you, you only back down when you know that winning isn't worth the sacrifice at hand. You learn to love with your whole heart, and it will scare the holy shit out of you. And you learn to forgive, because hanging on to a grudge is a futile thing and born of weakness.

I was born in the city of steel, and I was cut from a mold that told the world that I would be weak, that I would be fragile. Physical obstacles and cruelty afforded me what seemed like one path, and it led to anger and self-destruction. Instead I found a way out, but I had to cut that path for myself and I had to eliminate all of the bullshit excuses. And I had to learn that you don't always win, but you do always get a lesson, if you are open to it. Sharks hunt for survival. Fighters aren't that different. Each battle is something settled, some pain we can't express that we get to muddle through. If you are lucky in your life, you'll find your ring, your place to go to work that shit out. If you're lucky, you'll be able to forgive the people who hurt you the most, to quit hanging on to every excuse you afford yourself rather than actually facing the truth, which is that the bitterness poisons you worse than the initial pain. If you are lucky, you'll fail enough to love your success. The balance is what makes us genuine in life, what makes us real. I am a father, and I am a son. I am a fighter and a survivor. I am all of the above and more. No one is ever one thing only, unless it's by choice. Sharks never swim backward; they can't, and neither can I, not anymore. The past is an anchor with
suffering
written on the rope. I don't live there now. I am cutting myself free. And while I might not have everything figured out, I am slowly getting there, and I can say that I know who I am and I'm not perfect, but I am as resilient as the steel that was once made here, and I am a fighter, in every sense of the word. We all are.